1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a mounting-state display apparatus for displaying the mounting state of a device and, more particularly, to a mounting-state display apparatus for visually displaying a mounting state, in which various kinds of packages to be placed in a device are mounted thereon by using an NE-OPS (Network Element Operation System) for managing the device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an operator checks the mounting state of a transmission device and the presence or absence of an alarm by utilizing the display indicating function of an NE-OPS application program.
FIGS. 1 to 4 illustrate a process of generating a device status display image in a conventional mounting-state display apparatus for displaying the mounting states of devices.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of the conventional mounting-state display apparatus adapted to display image display information corresponding to individual devices by combining such information to the NE-OPS application program body.
FIG. 2 illustrates the flow of an example of a display process to be performed by the apparatus of FIG. 1.
In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 designates an example of a device to be displayed (hereunder referred to as a xe2x80x9cdisplay object devicexe2x80x9d), e.g., a transmission device, etc., in which various kinds of packages and components are disposed.
Reference numeral 2 denotes the conventional mounting-state display apparatus comprising the following portions. A device constitution information portion 21 stores screen layout information on a screen layout for displaying mounting-state information corresponding to each of specific display object devices. The screen layout information includes information on the configuration and arrangement of units, packages, and lamps, and so forth, which are fixedly assigned and correspond to each of the display object devices. The information on the configuration and arrangement is generated by a programmer (namely, manually generated) correspondingly to each of the display object devices.
An application program portion 22 stores the source code of the program body of the NE-OPS application program to be executed for performing the setting, maintenance, and operation of the display object devices. The compilation/linkage portion 23 compiles and links the screen layout information of the display object device 1 and the source code of the NE-OPS application program to thereby generate an executable NE-OPS application program for the display object device 1 and a device constitution display linked thereto.
A storage/control portion 24 stores the generated NE-OPS application program and the generated device constitution display. Further, the storage/control portion 24 communicates with the display object device 1 to thereby obtain from the device 1 device constitution information on the presence or absence of a package mounted thereon, so that the obtained device constitution information is reflected in the generated NE-OPS application program and the device constitution display. A display portion 25 displays the device constitution display represented by information, which is provided from the storage/control portion 24, on the screen thereof. Incidentally, various operations, such as the communication operation and the information obtaining operation, of the storage/control portion 24 are controlled by the NE-OPS application program. The same holds for examples that will be described below.
FIG. 2 illustrates the flow of an example of a process of displaying the device constitution display.
At steps S201 and S202, an operator selects one of plural NE-OPS application programs, which corresponds to a specific display object device 1, and screen layout information corresponding thereto, and then activates the selected NE-OPS application program. The storage/control portion 24 reads device constitution information from the specific display object device 1 and then correlates the read device constitution information to the screen layout information (at steps S203 and S204). Subsequently, at step S205, the display portion 25 displays the device constitution display, which corresponds to the display object device, on the screen thereof.
FIG. 3 illustrates the constitution of an example of the conventional mounting-state display apparatus, in which image display information on each of the devices is held in a database, and in which the information is displayed by executing the NE-OPS application program through the database.
Incidentally, in the drawings to be referred to in the description of this example and in the following description, like reference numerals designate like portions of the example of FIG. 1.
As shown in FIG. 3, the screen layout information corresponding to each of the display object devices 1 held in the device constitution information portion 21 is stored in the storage/control portion 24 as database information. Incidentally, the screen layout information itself is generated by an operator (namely, manually generated) even in this example, similar to the previously described example. The compilation/linkage portion 23 compiles the source code, which is read from the application program 22, of the NE-OPS application program, which has a common managing function among the devices, and links the compiled source code to the database. The storage/control portion 24 reads the device constitution information from the display object device 1 and links the read device constitution information to the screen layout information stored in the database. The display portion 25 displays the device constitution display represented by information, which is obtained by accessing the database provided in the storage/control portion 24, on the screen thereof.
FIG. 4 illustrates the flow of an example of a process of displaying the device constitution display of FIG. 3.
In the case of the example of FIG. 4, the order of the selection of one of the application programs and the activation of the selected application program is reversed (see steps S401 and S402). That is, in the case of this example, first, the NE-OPS application program, whose managing function is performed on the devices in common thereamong, is activated. Subsequently, an operator selects the screen layout information corresponding to a specific display object device 1 from pieces of screen layout information, which respectively correspond to a plurality of the devices and are registered in the database of the storage/control portion 24. Operations following this are similar to the corresponding operations illustrated in FIG. 2. That is, the storage/control portion 24 reads device constitution information from the specific display object device 1 and then correlates the read device constitution information to the screen layout information and, subsequently, the display portion 25 displays the device constitution display, which corresponds to the selected display object device, on the screen thereof (steps S403 to S405).
As described above, in the case of the example illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2, a combination of the screen layout information corresponding to each of the devices and the NE-OPS application program corresponding thereto is compiled and linked. Further, in the example illustrated in FIGS. 3 and 4, the database to be accessed is switched among a plurality of databases, each of which is constituted by the device constitution information corresponding to a corresponding one of the display object devices, by using the NE-OPS application program, whose managing function is performed in common thereamong. Alternatively, the information stored in the database corresponding to each of the devices is replaced with another piece of information corresponding thereto by using such an NE-OPS application program.
The mounting state of a device varies with the kind of the device. That is, the mounting position of each of units, blocks, and packages to be mounted on the device varies with the kind of the device. Thus, in the case of the former example, when the kind of the device to be managed is changed, there is the need for preparing a newly compiled NE-OPS application program. Furthermore, in the case of the latter example in which the same device managing method is used among the devices, although a most part of the NE-OPS application program can be used in common thereamong, there is the necessity for changing the displaying function of the NE-OPS application program to manage the individual devices, whose mounting states differ from one another, and the database to be prepared corresponding to each of the devices.
Therefore, in each of the cases of the examples, a mounting-state display of a device should be prepared correspondingly to each of the devices. Thus, the conventional mounting-state display apparatus has a drawback in that a very large number of man-hours are needed for generating a device constitution display corresponding to each of the devices. Moreover, recently, there has been developed a device adapted so that units, blocks, and the like can be freely mounted in a rack thereof. In the case of using such devices, the aforementioned conventional mounting-state display apparatus has another drawback in that the mounting positions of the units, blocks, and the like cannot be specified in a rack of each of such devices, and that the conventional apparatus cannot deal with such devices.
Accordingly, in view of the aforementioned drawbacks of the conventional apparatus, an object of the present invention is to provide a mounting-state display apparatus, for displaying the mounting-states of devices, which is adapted to prepare each of the constituent elements of the devices as components (or pixels) thereof represented by data, which can be accessed by a NE-OPS application program, to then read constitution information and component information from each of the devices, to subsequently construct a display needed by the NE-OPS application program by using the components according to the read information, and to then indicate the necessary display on the screen of an external display device.
In this way, the mounting-state display apparatus preliminarily has display information on each of the units, blocks, packages, and the like needed for configuring devices, consequently, a display representing the mounting state of each of the devices can be automatically constructed by the application program using constitution information read from each of the devices when the devices are managed. This eliminates the necessity for preparing display information corresponding to each of the devices, differently from the conventional apparatus adapted to prepare such display information.
Moreover, it is unnecessary for the apparatus of the present invention to generate a constitution display corresponding to each of the devices. Thus, the number of man-hours and the development time, which are necessary therefor, can be reduced. Furthermore, the employment of specifications common to a plurality of devices allows the application program to simultaneously manage the plurality of devices without discrimination among the kinds of the devices.
To achieve the foregoing object, according to the present invention, there is provided a mounting-state display apparatus, for displaying the mounting-states of devices, which comprises a device component database for holding device components, which represent a mounting state of each of the devices, as original picture elements of a minimum configuration required to indicate a mounting-state display, and an application program portion for accessing the device component database, and for generating a display indicating a mounting state of a specific one of the devices by performing operations of placing the original picture elements and changing the size thereof.
In an embodiment of this apparatus, the application program portion is adapted to receive device constitution information from a device having a mounting state to be displayed when accessing the device component database, and to read original picture elements from the database according to the device constitution information. Further, in this embodiment, the device constitution information may include placement starting point information of the original picture elements for the operation of placing the original picture elements and size information of the original picture elements for the operation of changing the size thereof with reference to the placement starting point.
In this embodiment, the device component database may hold original picture elements classified into classes according to the internal placement configuration of the device components. Moreover, the device component database may have a header portion, which corresponds to each of the classes and describes position information and size information of the original picture elements of each of the classes.
In this embodiment, the application program portion is adapted to draw the original picture elements on an image display layer corresponding to each of the classes after the operations of placing and changing the size thereof. Further, the original picture elements, which are drawn on the image display layer provided on a front-surface side, may be preferentially displayed by superimposing images among the layers. In this embodiment, the classes may include classes of units, blocks, and packages, and correspond to a rear-surface unit image display layer, an intermediate block image display layer, and a front-surface package image display layer, respectively.